British Airways ruined my day...

Great start, courtesy BA, to the three-flight trek to Bali for this year’s International Monetary Fund & World Bank Group meetings. Take-off at LHR delayed over two hours as, said the pilot, they hadn’t been able to make work the equipment to unload cargo that the ‘plane had brought from Tokyo and so they were going to leave it on board and take it all to Kuala Lumpur with us... (Anyone in London awaiting fresh wasabi root or some such may be in for a disappointment..) But then, creasing himself with smiles in that ever-so-chummy manner BA captains like to affect, here’s a funny thing, he said, actually, we’ve decided to stuff in a bit more cargo as well and - guess what? - that means we haven’t enough fuel so we need to wait for more... All accompanied with stuff about how the petrol station chaps had gone home because it’s Sunday - so we had to get them back hah-hardy-hah. Etcetera. Translation of all this claptrap: BA has messed up; it has to make up the money somewhere: we’ll double the cargo load on BA0033! Won’t that delay the passengers, sir? Yes, but since when did we care about that...? We’ll get the Captain to make it all sound like a jolly jape and they’ll be fine. Passive bunch, after all. Connexion missed in KL; connexion missed in Jakarta; no more flights to Denpasar Monday night; night in airport/second night without sleep; Tuesday meetings delayed. British Airways is not the worst airline in the world. But for gap between image or pose - as courteous, efficient, old school - and service delivered, it takes the cake. Awful for their staff - often nice, charming people who spend all day long apologising for how awful it is now compared to days of yore... Just thought I’d get that off my chest, readers.